More on the Food and Diet Industry

A few good articles by Mandy Katz about food, body image, diets, etc. in The Times yesterday. It's interesting to note that these articles are located in "Styles". It makes sense; body types have their own "fashion eras" so to speak. Venus had her day,
The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli

as did Twiggy.
Image via Match Game

One article is about the new-old "fat acceptance" trend, which on one side of the spectrum embraces realistic bodies and on the other encourages a complacency in obesity. Overall, the movement is about focusing on aspects of life other than weight: "The aim is to behave as if you have reached your 'goal weight' and to act on ambitions postponed while trying to become thin, everything from buying new clothes to changing careers."

It is too true that many people feel everything will fall into place once they lose a certain amount of weight. Often times when that goal weight is attained the obsession with food, exercise or diet still remains and the person is no closer to their actual goals.

Katz mentions the adversary of this new trend–the weight loss industry itself, a staggering $30-billion dollar monstrosity.

Katz also wrote a review of Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere by Kate Harding, a book about Harding's own experience with ditching dieting and learning to eat intuitively.

Harding has a photo set on Flickr titled "Illustrated BMI Categories". It's interesting to look at pictures of these women, many of whom are attractive. They all are seemingly oblivious to the words "underweight", "normal" or "obese" hovering above their images.

The Body Mass Index Calculator is not an accurate tool for determining a healthy weight. It takes no account of bone or muscle mass, and unfortunately is used as a standard in many health practices, including eating disorder treatment centers.

Men don't have it easy either, not to say that struggles with weight and food is a gender-specific problem. According to Men's Health, a truly fit male can bench press 1.5 times his body weight, swim 700 yards in 12 minutes and leap to the basketball rim. Those sound more like the standards of a professional athlete rather than a man who's merely in shape.

We need to redefine our notions of beauty and health. Be it a string bean or a great pumpkin, the human body is an amazing and beautiful entity.